Spot Cleaner

Pixabay

If memory serves, Michael Jackson tried to change the colour of his skin. That was probably the most extreme example during this present era of the measures to which people go in the constant search to feel better about themselves. The other example that comes to mind is the woman who underwent endless surgeries to make herself look like Barbie of the famous (or infamous) Barbie and Ken doll collection.

On a smaller scale we "nip and tuck," cream and cover, make-up and dress-up, tone-up and touch-up, every flaw we think we see that keeps us from being whatever someone else has decided is handsome, beautiful, acceptable, marketable, relevant, or worthy of being taken seriously. 

Then along comes someone like Jeremiah to expose, literally, the ugliness that really counts and the impossibility of covering that ugliness up at any price or by any means.

The prophets spent a lot of time describing the consequences attached to the continual rebellion and disobedience of God's people. Tucked away in one of these lengthy narrations is this statement: "And if you say yourself, 'Why has this happened to me?"— it is because of your many sins that your skirts have been torn off and your body mistreated. Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil" (Jeremiah 13:22, 23).

We are exposed!

We can't change what we are, no matter how "pretty" we try to make the outside, any more than that leopard can change his spots.

That's where the grace of God comes into the picture.

We are sinners. It's bred into us like skin colour and spots. And its presence results in judgment and death. There is nothing we can do about what we are or how we will end up. But Someone else did.

"God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

Paul goes on to explain all of the ins and outs of the issue. In Romans 6, he writes: "But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin...you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness...the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:17, 18, 22, 23).

It's A, B, C, D.

ACKNOWLEDGE what you are—a sinner unable to deal with your sin or its consequences.

BELIEVE that Jesus, God's Son, loved you so much that He took your sin and its consequences to the cross and disposed of both.

CONFESS Him as Saviour and Lord and ask for His forgiveness and for the abundant life, eternal and temporal, that only He can give.

DEDICATE your life to living to the glory the God according to His Holy Word.

That's the Gospel. Value doesn't come under the knife or out of a bottle or tube. It comes in relationship with the only One who changes spots.